CENTER OF MEDIA RESEARCH — Sep 11 — According to Advertising.com, in the first half of 2007, 62% of consumers viewed news clips online, 38% saw movie trailers, and 36% watched music videos. Those aged 18-34 prefer entertainment content, whereas those aged 35+ prefer news. 94% prefer ads to subscription fees, 51% would watch a television episode online if they missed it on TV, and 80% indicated online video usage does not cut into TV time.
The full article was originally published at Center For Media Research, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: '94% of users prefer ads to subscription fees.' Which explains why PlentyofFish has grown so fast.
Hmmm. seems like a flawed statement to me.
Yes of course people prefer free. But why are some free sites working and others failing? Seems to me there must be other variables here. Visibility (aka google rankings?) seems even more relevant than the price to the growth of the sites. And then there’s the question why POF is the only site that has consistently gotten the visibility necessary to grow? Because the majority of free sites cannot afford to buy the visibility, so they’ll be stuff in obscurity. Actually, I’ve noticed POF is dropping in many key search terms – I wonder how Markus will fare in 2008?
People like all sorts of stuff in theory that doesn’t really work. But, i’ll bet people would prefer to pay a little more for an active community with lots of ppl I imagine, than a free one with no one in it. And the next question one needs to ask is where does the budget for necessary marketing efforts come from?
If you simply ask the question do you want to pay or do you want it free- the answer to the question should be obvious. You have to layer it with realistic nuance to get a reasonable response. Otherwise, why would cable and ditectTV be doing so well? Why don’t we all just watch fuzzy free TV? Again – the answer to this question is obvious, no?
Fact of the matter is there is a demand for community and presence – and very few sites will have the ability to build these things and offer it to their members for free; and those that do have bee very very lucky, riding on a temporary inefficency of free exposure from Google, or MySpace or other. Is this repeatable though? Something you would feel comfortable building a long-term business model off of? Easy come, easy go ya know?
Bottom line, yes – people like free stuff. But people will also pay for quality, particularly as the quality between free and premium products begins to diverge. As the rug gets pulled out from under these sites for free traffic – what are they going to do to compete? Or will they simply die on the vine? Will be interesting to watch…
Hmmm. seems like a flawed statement to me.
Yes of course people prefer free. But why are some free sites working and others failing? Seems to me there must be other variables here. Visibility (aka google rankings?) seems even more relevant than the price to the growth of the sites. And then there’s the question why POF is the only site that has consistently gotten the visibility necessary to grow? Because the majority of free sites cannot afford to buy the visibility, so they’ll be stuff in obscurity. Actually, I’ve noticed POF is dropping in many key search terms – I wonder how Markus will fare in 2008?
People like all sorts of stuff in theory that doesn’t really work. But, i’ll bet people would prefer to pay a little more for an active community with lots of ppl I imagine, than a free one with no one in it. And the next question one needs to ask is where does the budget for necessary marketing efforts come from?
If you simply ask the question do you want to pay or do you want it free- the answer to the question should be obvious. You have to layer it with realistic nuance to get a reasonable response. Otherwise, why would cable and ditectTV be doing so well? Why don’t we all just watch fuzzy free TV? Again – the answer to this question is obvious, no?
Fact of the matter is there is a demand for community and presence – and very few sites will have the ability to build these things and offer it to their members for free; and those that do have bee very very lucky, riding on a temporary inefficency of free exposure from Google, or MySpace or other. Is this repeatable though? Something you would feel comfortable building a long-term business model off of? Easy come, easy go ya know?
Bottom line, yes – people like free stuff. But people will also pay for quality, particularly as the quality between free and premium products begins to diverge. As the rug gets pulled out from under these sites for free traffic – what are they going to do to compete? Or will they simply die on the vine? Will be interesting to watch…
This idea that ‘94% of users prefer ads to subscription fees’ doesn’t mean much :-)People are shelling out a billion dollars a year + to paid personals sites!
Sure, we would all like free everything, but we also live in the real world and realise you get what you pay for.
This idea that ‘94% of users prefer ads to subscription fees’ doesn’t mean much :-)People are shelling out a billion dollars a year + to paid personals sites!
Sure, we would all like free everything, but we also live in the real world and realise you get what you pay for.